


Ghost Hunter

by Ma_Kir



Category: Fate/stay night & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Character Turned Into Vampire, Closure, Gen, Lost Love, Post-Heaven's Feel, Redemption, Supernatural Elements, Vampire Hunters, lost innocence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-27
Updated: 2018-08-27
Packaged: 2019-07-03 03:42:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15810609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ma_Kir/pseuds/Ma_Kir
Summary: Years after everyone is gone, and her mission is complete, a hunter finally sits under that tree. Eventually.An alternative ending to the Heaven's Feel Route Normal End and an extension of an idea from Chapter 72 of Fate/Stay Life.





	Ghost Hunter

The Dead Apostle watches her through the scrying crystal.

She's put aside her research, for the moment, leaving it incomplete on the slab behind her. The Dead Apostle knows, at this point, if she hasn't gotten it right after a century or so, it can wait at least a half an hour. Somehow, she knows that if her guest reaches her -- and she's reasonably sure that she will -- their encounter will not take long.

If she could be honest with herself, it had been a long time coming.

*

She knows she's gotten past the first few layers of the Bounded Field. Despite all this time, the place still remembers who she is ... or what she used to be. Perhaps the monster that tried to make her had failed in another crucial way, after all. Or perhaps, in retrospect, she figures that the experiment she was -- the thing she used to be -- had been all too successful.

Blood tells, after all. And, after tonight, she would have the last word.

Perhaps it would be the word of a Hindu deity, or a Buddhist sage. Or maybe the word of God Almighty. At this point, in her existence, wandering through this pale, wan place, she figures that it really doesn't matter anymore.

The fact of the matter is that she is just a Vessel. She has always been.

The curses are clever. They are embedded in the crystals that she knows are hidden in the cobblestones of this Western Manse. She has no illusions of the Apostle not knowing that she's there. Perhaps she even chose these curses specifically for that reason.

Peril, Fire, Sorrow, Hate, and Forgetfulness. A gap opening in the earth to prematurely bury her. A crystal of fire that would make her spontaneously combust or melt from the inside out. Ice come to seal her away, or freeze the blood in her body. More flame ... no, unleash an uncontrolled rage that would make her lash out at everything else, break her concentration, and possibly even injure herself. And, of course, spells that affect the mind: that obscure perception, or even erase knowledge.

Earth, Flame, Water, Spirit, and Air.

Cocytus, Phlegathon, Acheron, Styx, and Lethe.

Peril, Fire, Sorrow, Hate, and Forgetfulness.

Aside from the captured spirits, evil to their core -- as she would have expected no less from an Average One, and especially this particular prey -- she knows that the vampire has utilized essentially the four humors with her elemental affinities to make this particular endeavour as difficult as possible. Black bile sprays from from the ground, attempting to take her down, but Reinforced reflexes allow her to dodge the ooze at every corner, even as the ground opens up under her worn boots. Smaller Bounded Fields form around, draining the Magical Energy around that she barely avoids and breaks through. The yellow bile of flame bursts from some of the crystals, dousing the fire with acid and feverish phantasms as she holds her breath, counting in her mind, and icy phlegm matter tries to hold her in place, the curses filled with despair .... While the blood, the blood seems to flow everywhere.

Surely a vampire would understand that she, of all people, could never forget the sight of blood, or the fluids of the body after everything she'd gone through in her lifetime. After everything she had done.

This is all Western occultism, derived from the ancient Classical Mediterranean world of course, but it is fused with more. The evil spirits threatening to rend and take her are more than just exceptions. They do not stand out and break the pattern. She knows, as a hunter of these kinds of beings, as more than that, that in this land in particular are other principles. Her particular prey, for instance, has studied a fusion of Western and Far East Asian philosophies. Even as the incarnated bile and phlegmatic curses attempt to eat through the patched, faded matter of her Reinforced Kevlar cassock, her forearms held out protectively in front of her, and her continuously blocking her face, she recalls her time wandering, and eventually finding the reclusive Houjutsushi. Some were Ommyoudou: astrologists, and alchemists that dealt with the elements of the Wu Xing. Others were monks that practiced the art of exorcism.

A grim smirk appears on the side of her face as she thinks about how her foe is more than just an admirer of the ancient Achaian and Latin Classics of Homer, Virgil, and Dante.

Cocytus and Peril as the Earth that neutralizes and negates the powers of its prey. Phlegathon and Fire that brims and burns with energy. Acheron and Sorrow as Winter and Water making one's life force retract in their veins. Styx and Hate as Metal that reaps what it sows, and collects all souls. And Lethe and Forgetfulness ... Blood ... life force in Wood, the tangled branches and roots of familial ties is abundant in their quest to drown their victims in mindlessness, in meaningless existence. This perversion of the the Four Humors and the Five Elements cycle is like a personal astrological sign, or the flow of a twisted bodily system.

She reaches into the pockets of her jacket, and pulls out her two Calicos. Her dark eyes, once purple and now violet, narrow. 

Wood is consumed by Fire and soaked in blood. Earth smothers Fire. Fire melts Ice and evaporates Water. Earth bears Metal. Metal contains Water. Water quenches Fire. Air makes Fire rage out of control. Water is made a vessel of Air. Water nourishes Wood. Wood grows in Earth. Fire makes Earth from ashes and negates itself with its own weight, while growing a new kind of Wood. And so on. 

The hunter never mastered astrology, or fortune-telling, but she already knows how this encounter is going to end.

*

The Dead Apostle isn't surprised that the hunter, known as Second Sister in the Church, the Ghost Hunter of Cherry Blossoms in the Moonlit World, uses mundane firearms in conjunction with her martial abilities. The other woman moves fast, with the precision of a Church Executor. She has obviously faced curses and wards such as these before. But how is she able to utilize Elemental magecraft? She shouldn't be capable of such, beyond one other element. Then the vampire narrows her eyes, and sees the truth of it. The bullets firing out of Second Sister's guns have Sanskrit symbols on them. They are binding symbols.

The vampire hasn't been idle in her time. She knows that Second Sister once traveled around the world, especially in the Far East. Once, long ago, she'd even visited the Buddhist Temple .... before it had been abandoned, right after it had been rebuilt in another incarnation. She'd been studying Breathing and Walking with another sect. Apparently, those lessons, combined with the dusty scrolls and abandoned Sutras in the backrooms of that lost Temple, left by long gone monks, had led to the foundations of something else entirely many years onward. The Dead Apostle can sense -- _smell_ \-- spirits. They are other spirits that she has not bound herself. The bullets ... Somehow, Second Sister captured .... She nods in appreciation as she realizes the full extent of her adversary's cunning.

Those smells are of specific spirits. Entities of fire, water, earth, air ... Even some pure spirit itself to counter the Ether traps she left her. And those traps she can't negate through using the same elements against them, she counters with their complementary opposites, rotating between Western and Far Eastern patterns. She _recognizes_ her patterns even after all this time. 

But some of those spirits are extremely rare. How did she get them? Most of these were on the Reverse Side of the World at this point. Of course, there could be some remnants but getting them would be all but impossible for any ordinary person, magus or otherwise to procure. No, the Dead Apostle recognizes that those Sanskrit symbols are Binding. And most of the spirits being utilized are not of the five elements, but are close the usual entities and remnants of humans that often exist in the Moonlit World. 

She's figured it out, however. Second Sister, when they had been any reports of her, had never been said to use any of the five elements. But the Dead Apostle knows, personally, that she can naturally Absorb and Bind, such entities. Very few others would have had the time to figure this out, never mind survived the experience. Second Sister knew that she would be facing an Average One, and thus came prepared with these weapons. She must have found the spirits, bound them, and used their Conceptual principles in her bullets to negate and destroy her traps: perhaps even counter her own powers. The vampire feels something she hasn't felt in a very long time. So long, in fact, that she can barely even remember what this feeling is called. 

No matter. She calls out a command in German, even as she watches the hunter come deeper into her Mansion, as fascinated by her approach as someone would be watching an oncoming firestorm.

*

The hunter, call sign Second Sister, has run out of bullets by the time she enters the house. She's a little scratched up, but nothing that can't be dealt with by healing magic, or a few good bandages. Her Reinforcement has held up well. The old priest that taught her, so long ago, would be proud. Granted, he'd be less proud of the fact that she threw his opportunity to join the Holy Church right in his face after leaving it years ago when she got all she wanted, but it's only the principle of the thing that matters to her now. 

Her quarry had been stingy. Most of the spirits dissipated once she sprung or destroyed her traps. The other gems had been obliterated by her firepower. Still, she'd managed to grab a few more spirits with her gloves, opening her Magic Circuits as she had been taught, channeling her Od, thinking of herself as a Hollow Vessel in the darkness, absorbing the energy like Water. After all, as the Old Testament seemed to state in its many translations, wasn't there only water and darkness before God made the world? Before it was shaped with its first intent? There is no Emptiness inside of Second Sister as humanoid shapes materialize from the walls. This isn't Magic. Of the two Imaginary Numbers, she has the Hollow Element. To be Hollow did not mean Emptiness or Nothingness. It meant you still have a shape. You can change that shape, that outline, but you are a Vessel. A cup. That is what she had been meant to be: just a container for the desires of others, and her own. 

But it is just a place to keep her one, last intent. 

The golems are made of gems. The Apostle has been busy this past century, in more than one way. There is nothing obviously grotesque like the Dead or even Ghouls. Second Sister didn't expect there to be any. Most intelligent vampires didn't make familiars so obvious, even in their own Territorial Fields. These are practically ornate statues to any mundane glance. But she can sense the stolen life energies inside of them. Very well. Even as the constructs come at her with arrows, and halberds, even katanas, she summons the excess energies inside of her -- from the powers she's harvested -- to bring her own friends into play.

She knows that most people believe that she fights on her own. But Second Sister likes to make new friends.

*

The Apostle watches as Second Sister summons Shadow familiars, small semi-humanoid beings to attack the spiritually animated golems. She watches the creatures attack them, ignoring their armour and directly phasing through it to damage their spiritual cores, such as they are. She had a feeling that Second Sister often fought this way. Indeed, the hunter herself has punched and kicked through the heads and torsos of her constructs, her fists blazing with an almost black-red light.

Hollow. Hollow, of the Imaginary Numbers, is an element that specifically affects spirits and spiritual bodies. What's more, whatever the hunter's gloves are made from -- engraved with Sanskrit or Latin or Runes -- it punches through the defensive spells she'd woven around them.  The Dead Apostle sighs. She knows it's only a matter of time now. 

Still, with that twinge in her long dead heart, she hopes that they will have some time ... before this game finally ends.

*

It's almost anticlimactic when Second Sister opens the door to the Workshop in the basement. There are no disruptive wards that she has to neutralize, negate, or absorb. No further malicious spirits to banish, or obliterate, or convert into usable energy. No vampires to bind and destroy. Not even any hybrid monstrosities. She didn't expect there to be. 

It's just the two of them now.

The Dead Apostle stands there, with her back to her. She's standing over a scrying Gem, as she knew she would be. The place is cluttered with masses of old books, artifacts, and Mystic Codes. There is a slab with a half-assembled Sword made of jewels. The vampire wears a darker red, almost burgundy now. Her black hair is untied and sprawls to her hips. Second Sister can see just how pale the other's hands are as they are flat at her sides.

"I never did get the thing to work again, without them." The Dead Apostle murmurs aloud. 

Second Sister slowly shakes her head. "You should have taken a break, when you still could."

The other laughs. "True enough. I guess I look like I haven't gotten much sun, lately, huh?"

The hunter sighs. "I warned you. I warned you, that day, years ago."

"I know you did."

The Dead Apostle walks over to the table, idly playing with a Gem with a pallid finger. Second Sister sees her eyes, once ice blue, are now a deep ruby red. "I always wondered why you joined them. I mean ... our Family had been close to the Church. But you were never really religious. Not that I can ...." She shakes her head, her dark hair falling over her elfin face. "Not that I ever really knew you after a while anyway." 

Second Sister's eyes narrow. "You know why I did."

"Yeah." The Dead Apostle says, after a time. "To destroy the heresies that made you. To make sure no one ever has to go through anything that you ever did again. I mean ..." She turns, looking directly at her for the first time. "First you wandered the world, met with all those monks. Practiced meditation. Then Sutra and prayer. But that old priest. Heh. I wonder what would have happened if I'd stayed and taught you instead of him. He came first, really. After that monster before him. First the Church. Then the Exorcists. Then the Eighth Assembly." She chuckles. "Oh, like I said, I had my sources back then. I even know that the Burial Agency had been sniffing for you at that point."

"I was the spare." Second Sister replies, without a trace of irony in her voice.

"Yeah." The vampire shakes her head. "A magus who could harm not only spiritual bodies, but also humans if need be. At first, you had no issue following orders. It gave you a sense of purpose. To banish evil spirits. Ghosts. Wraiths. Daemons. Fox spirits and the like. Then heretics, of course. And, well ..." She points at herself. "Vampires. But only under orders. At least, until the Burial Agency. Are they still after you for leaving?"

Second Sister says nothing.

"I don't suppose it matters, that much." The vampire continues. "Even as a member of the Burial Agency and a lot of the leeway that gets you, you still had to answer to someone. And ... after a while, it just didn't feel the same, did it? Not the same as what you lost. So then you went for the Eastern stuff. Back to the basics. You were ... always good with hand-eye coordination. With Archery. You meditated and prayed. Our Family, well, we were Christians but you only converted for the resources. The Church liked your skills. But you'd hoped to find meaning in the faith where we came from. You wanted the gods to recognize what you were trying to do, right? To have that piety fill you. To fill you.

"But it didn't work, did it?"

Second Sister doesn't answer that question. She doesn't have to. Instead, she looks the vampire right in her red eyes that used to be blue and asks her own question. _"Why?"_

*

The Dead Apostle takes a few moments to absorb the inevitable question. "Why did I ..." She chuckles morosely. "I had that Sword in my hands. Between the others, I succeeded. But then the baka was gone, along with the brat. I needed time. And I didn't have a lot of it. When I went on trial for the incompetence and crimes of others, I knew just how easy it would have been for the whole line to be exterminated. To finish what that damn priest started. Zelretch coming there barely saved my ass."

She looks at Second Sister. The woman is practically the same. Her purple hair is a little longer, perhaps a little more listless. A scar runs down one of her eyes and her lower lip. There are a few lines around her eyes and mouth, but nothing more. She sees the cross on the other's neck, the beads on her wrist, and the Sanskrit symbols on parts of her former priest cassock. How she'd gotten that is beyond her, as she knows the Holy Church has different vestments for female members. But she knows that Second Sister has been around, given how patched up her black leather version of the coat really is: more of a trench coat than a cleric uniform at this point in the game. And all those ribbons. Different ones, faded in pale pink and violet colours: around her hands, her forearms, her neck. 

"I couldn't risk it." The Dead Apostle states, with finality. "We'd lost too much. I couldn't trust this to someone else. I couldn't ...  I couldn't do this to someone else. Surely you, of all people, can understand that much. The Ritual was a failure. I wasn't getting any younger. The Association was a bigoted piece of crap more used to squabbling amongst themselves, and my Master, if still want to call him that, was less than helpful in showing me how to do what needed to be done. Our goal was always to achieve Akasha. To get to the Root. I didn't realize that, then. So much lore had been lost. By the time I found out, and realized the reality of the situation, I knew something drastic had to be done." 

"You could have still had a life." Second Sister says, her tone hollow.

"You could have too." The Dead Apostle replies. 

The other woman's face is cast with shadow, but the vampire can see right through it. "No." The vampire amends. "No, I suppose you couldn't have. I suppose neither of us could have."

The silence stretches like eternity. They can sense each other's Magic Circuits being open. The vampire can hear the steady heartbeat of Second Sister. She wonders how she can do that, how that Breathing and Walking can keep her steady at a time like this when her own non-existent pulse trembles like a frenetic phantom sensation. "I just want to know," she says, "how did you ... survive this long?"

Second Sister almost looks abashed. But then the vampire figures it out. "Of course." She marvels. "All those ghosts, those spirits and daemons. You still have that bonding and entrapment power." She smiles, and is self-conscious of her fangs showing. "You couldn't achieve holiness. I certainly can't smell it on you. So you used your power to absorb all those souls. The ones you exorcised. The ones you fought and destroyed. You convert them into energy .... to keep yourself alive. But how did you ..."

"The last of the Icecolles gave me some advice." Second Sister says, with the unspoken implication quite clear. "I knew, that day, when my sources contacted me about the new situation here, that I wasn't ready. That I couldn't face you then. So I waited. This ... this is my last job."

"For whom?" The vampire's eyes narrow. "The Church? The Association?"

"Neither." Second Sister states flatly. "No one."

"Huh." The vampire looks down. "I suppose that makes sense. The damned troll _disowned_ me after I took matters into my own hands. Said I wasted my potential, doing this to myself. Made the Association promise to leave me alone, provided I didn't kill or torture any innocents. But I wanted to show him." She points at the Sword. "I wanted to show him that I didn't need him anymore. I never did. I wanted to show him that I didn't need anyone to achieve my destiny!" 

"Not even me." 

"That isn't even a question." The vampire suddenly snarls. "You _left_ , remember? Said you had to make up for your life. For your mistakes. He wouldn't have wanted that! _He_ \--"

"Don't." The other's voice turns hard, and cold. "Don't you dare say his name. He'd be ashamed of you. That after everything he did, you turned into this."

"Oh?" The vampire asks. "And what do you think he'd think of you?"

"I know I'm dirty and disgusting." Second Sister says. "I'm used to having filth inside of me. I'm glad he didn't survive, to see this. But at least I can use the badness inside me, which I used to hurt so many others, to hurt the other monsters this time around."

"I haven't hurt any innocents." The vampire says.

"No." The hunter replies. "But the monks are all but gone. They've left. You use criminals and trespassers for your experiments. Some Enforcers go missing when they come here against orders. Even some priests from the Church." She doesn't mention the Church on the Hill that no longer exists. She doesn't have to. "But you have compromised so much. So much of what you are. Of what you used to be. Zolgen Makiri started out as a magus with good intentions. That's what Zelretch told me, once, when he met me on a mission. The problem was that he just lived for too long. No, you haven't gone after any innocents." Her eyes glitter. "And you won't."

"You don't get it." The Dead Apostle mutters. "Don't you see? When I make this Sword work, and I will, I can tap right into mana itself from all corners of the multiverse. I won't have to feed anymore! None of that other stuff matters! I can go to other realities, or discover a whole new Magic. Maybe I can even bring him back! S --"

"The ends justify the means." Second Sister pulls off the two ribbons on her arms, channeling Od into them, the tang of it in the air, as they become handles with long, blades. "The person I knew would never have said that."

Fury and ... something else fills the vampire's growl. "I'm not dying here today. Not after all my sacrifices, you blind hypocrite!"

In a blink of an eye, the Dead Apostle brings out an Azoth Dagger, then touches the pendant on her neck flowing with the power of countless units of mana. The pang of emotion is gone, replaced by a red rage. Second Sister throws her Black Keys even as she summons blasts of Ether upon her. 

And then, all talk is over.

*

Second Sister knows that pain is engraved into the body. The body is the Vessel of the intention. And the body remembers. 

They exchange their blasts for what seem like ages. She throws the Keys with the secret technique taken from the Agency, the Iron Plate Effect, the heavy ends managing to detonate the areas of the floor where they hit. She knows she doesn't have a lot of time. She has to go all out.

It's almost like that time under the Mountain again as the Dead Apostle knocks her back, the blasts of Ether incinerating her Keys. She holds out a hand and absorbs the energy she can. The area ripples around them as her modified Bounded Field manifests. It forms from the blood she traces onto the floor where she fell. The glyphs are some of the few things she has left of a woman she once loved, who helped save her life, another person who died because of her. 

The vampire calls on her variant of Chinese Kenpo and her accelerated, Reinforced reflexes to close the distance: to end this.

One hit from the Apostle, and she would be dead. It doesn't matter how many spirits or energies remain in her. But if she can just get her close ... just enough ....

Darkness surrounds the both of them as her Field grows, trapping and binding the vampire: disrupting her connection to her Workshop Bounded Field, to her Territory's mana.... to her land. Second Sister knows that if the Apostle had the Sword from years ago, she would have already lost this battle. The vampire screams as the bonds hiss through her undead flesh. But Second Sister knows from experience that her wounds will just forget having happened, her skin reverting to its undamaged state from before. The Curse of Restoration is a bitch at the worst of times, and this is the vampire's own Territory possibly bolstering it from blood magecraft. She pulls the ribbon from her hair, the one from a long time ago, the one from a child abandoned to be an experiment to a heretic, who became a monster, who spent her whole life trying to repent, who missed three people above all others ...

She materializes the Black Key from her oldest ribbon, right into the vampire's chest .... 

And it is over.

The Field remains, but it feels like background noise, still draining the vampire's Od, still binding her. The Black Key has pinned her to the floor. For a few moments, the Apostle looks stunned. Her eyes ... Second Sister can almost see the blue again. Then, she's bleeding. She's bleeding out of her eyes. Second Sister then realizes what that is. It sinks in just what she has finally done. 

"I'm ..." Second Sister says. "I'm ...."

"No ..." The vampire ... the woman croaks. "Don't you dare." She coughs up blood. "Don't be sorry."

The woman falls to the ground, looking older than she had been before. Her smooth skin withers. Her black hair greys and turns white. Second Sister goes to one knee and holds her in her arms. It occurs to her, if time had been kind, that they might have resembled each other, that they might have grown old together naturally. 

"Please ..." The vampire says, in a weak voice. "Please hold me ... I'm ... I'm scared ..."

Second Sister holds the other. The other could trick her. Could wait for the Key to lose its effect. She could use this tactic to break her concentration on the blood glyph. Instead, she finds herself stroking the other's hair.

"I'm tired." The other says. "I just want ... to hear the Lord's Prayer. Just like Father ... used to say to us. Remember?"

Second Sister closes her eyes. "I remember." 

Her sister looks up at her. Both of them know the implicit lie. She is not going to speak the Lord's Prayer for her. They know that what is going to happen next is going to hurt. In more than one way. It's going to hurt, and then it's going to be over. Forever. "Sakura ..." The person who used to be Tohsaka Rin says. "It isn't your fault. It was never your fault ... I ... I love ..."

Second Sister holds her as she begins to chant the Baptism Rite. The Lord has His final word after all. She holds her sister. She holds her as she burns, clutching at her, blue flames crackling around them. She holds Tohsaka Rin, the last Head of the Tohsaka Clan, with tears streaming down her face, until the other burns into ash, and dust, and nothing. The body remembers. But blood is memory itself.

When it's over, when the tether between Rin's soul and her altered body is fully gone, when there is literally nothing left, the woman called Second Sister sits on the floor. Only a few grains of dust remain in the palms of her hands. Her eyes blur as she looks down and whispers. "I love you too, Neesan. Rest in peace." She pauses, gathering the last of her fortitude to say her final words. "Goodbye."

*

Matou Sakura leaves the burning Mansion behind her. She walks throughout the rest of the night, as though her mind is almost as untethered from her body as a newborn vampire's would be. All of her energy is gone. She spent all of it getting into the Mansion, fighting through its defenses, and destroying its master. It's taken everything she has. All of the souls, those she had taken, and bound voluntarily are gone. 

It's still there, when she gets to it. A part of her wonders if Rin had maintained it while she had been away, while she had been lost ...

She doesn't make it into the Residence. Instead of letting her legs give out on her, she sits under the tree. She manages to even sit in a lotus position. Sakura looks down at her last ribbon, stained in soot, blood, sweat, and tears. A weight that she never knew she had been carrying disappears off of her chest. Out of her being. Second Sister, the Ghost Hunter of Cherry Blossoms, the scourge of spirits, undead, and heretics in the Moonlit World is dying. She is, if she has to be honest with herself, already gone. This was just a formality. 

She sighs, seeing the sun rise orange, and red through the pink-pale leaves of the tree. In her time at the seminaries, so long ago, she came across the apocrypha of Adam's second wife. The first was Lilith who transcended her existence, or became condemned to the existence of a demon. The third was Eve, the Mother of Mankind. But the second wife was a woman God created for Adam. The only problem was that God created this second woman from the ground up: bones, innards, and layers of flesh first right in front of her would-be groom who, so disgusted by what he saw inside her, rejected her: consigned her into oblivion. 

And Sakura understood what that meant. She also understood what it meant when one other person saw her, created, deconstructed from the ground up, who saw her deformities and insides .... saw what was inside her, and never rejected her for it. Who died for her. Who gave her another chance.  

"I took your dream. The one you discarded for me. Like I promised." Sakura sighs, hearing behind her whisper the voice of the young girl she hasn't been in over a century. "See you soon ..." She murmurs. ".... Senpai ..."

It's been said that when Second Sister visits an unholy site and hallows it, or destroys the undead lord of an ancient stronghold, or banishes a spirit, she leaves nothing else behind but a single pale cherry flower. This time, when she closes her eyes to this world, for the last time, there are thousands. 

**Author's Note:**

> So yes, I went there. A little while ago, and I don't remember when, I wondered to myself what powers would Sakura have developed after Heaven's Feel. I explored that in Fate/Stay Life to an extent, and I am not ruling out more of it. 
> 
> But imagine a scenario where Rider died helping Shirou defeat Saber Alter. Imagine Shirou freed Sakura from Angra Mainyu using Rule Breaker and died utilizing Excalibur Image on the Greater Grail while Rin manages to escape with Sakura. Think about Sakura staying with the temporary old priest at the Church on the Hill as Rin goes to answer for the Heaven's Feel Ritual, and the incredible guilt and remorse she feels over contributing to the deaths of those she loves. Think about how Shirou gave up his dream. Think about how Sakura always looked up to him. How she loved him. 
> 
> Imagine her utilizing her powers, Water and Hollow cursed by Angra Mainyu to be able to hurt physical beings as well as spiritual ones. Imagine her learning martial arts, creating Black Keys, learning the Baptism Rite, utilizing them as an Exorcist, having a hate-on for heretic magi based on what Zouken did to her, but tired of just helping others study artifacts and relics, or hunting on orders. That doesn't satisfy her and she tries to study with Far Eastern groups such as the Houjutsushi: trying to use meditation, Sutra, and prayer but ultimately not having the spiritual enlightenment, but the endless meditation of her own Hollow nature and capacity to contain power to adapt those techniques. Then, one day, she finds out that someone close to her is potentially becoming as bad a monster as her supposed Grandfather. 
> 
> I know she is still connected to the Grail, and has all that mana cycling in, but in the Normal Ending it didn't stop her from aging: though you could argue that she might stopped studying magecraft beyond the basics and never learned to extend her life. I'm sure I made a whole lot of continuity errors from Nasuverse lore but, honestly? I don't really care. I just really like this story of a Ghost Hunter Sakura -- which has such a ring to it -- that didn't just wait for a dead young man to come back to her, grow old, and meet him in the afterlife. 
> 
> When I visually picture this Sakura, I see a combination of Natalia Kaminsky and the Major Motoko Kusanagi from Ghost in the Shell, save with some priestly vestments and ribbons: especially the faded, tattered one given to her by Rin so long ago in her hair. Perhaps a few scars, as I mentioned. Between you and I, I think she'd been both beautiful and tragic. I have so many stories to write, and tell, and this one was hard: harder than all of them to get out. But I'm glad I did, and I hope you enjoyed reading it. I learned a lot from this. I look forward to applying some of those lessons.


End file.
